Stuff You Should Know - What exactly is the Peter Principle?

Episode Date: June 18, 2009

The Peter Principle describes how workers who excel in bureaucratic systems are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. Learn more about the Peter Principle in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Buffalo Park and Zoo, and sports and literary attractions too. Expand your sense of wonder today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, Wanderers Welcome. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. There's Chuck Bryant about Falsely and I'm Josh Clark. This is Stuff You Should Know. How's it going? You just went all heat-haul. I totally did, didn't I? I got the price tag on my little hat. Did you watch that as a kid? No, I never did. I was a more solid gold guy. Oh yeah, see that now. Big time. And Muppets, Muppets actually I think came on before

after solid gold. Kelburnet show? Yeah. Yeah, my mom was a big Kelburnet fan. Me too. I thought Tim Conway was the funniest human being alive. You're gonna bring up Tim Conway. Chuck always talks about Tim Conway. It's incessant. It's always about Tim Conway. Tim Conway this, Tim Conway that. You know what never happened to Tim Conway? He never got promoted to a job he wasn't qualified for. We've been doing this way too long, Chuck. Way too long together. You can predict my every move. Yes. He can just point and he knows what I'm about to do. Sometimes I wonder if I actually do things because he's telling me to with his mind. Wow. If I only had that power, dude. Oh, I'd be in big trouble. Yeah, you would. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's talk about the Peter Principle. Have you ever

heard of this before? Well, I read your article when it was initially published a while ago. But I mean, were you disappointed with it then too? No, I actually thought it was better then than I do now. But I see I grew up with this. Like my dad had this book. Oh, really? Yeah, it was like it was like 60s kind of like intelligent ho ho ho kind of joke, you know, like cocktail party humor. Sure. Yeah. And I grew up around that kind of thing. So I, you know, intelligence. Right. So this was like the Peter Principle to me is something that like I've known forever. So it's odd to meet people who who hadn't really heard of it before. Well, my parents were both educators and maybe like I knew nothing about business and corporate life and that kind

of thing. Well, my dad was an engineer, a train engineer. Yeah, dude, dude. No, no, okay. No, he's a mechanical engineer for untrained. Yep. Let's go. Okay. So Chuck, what we're talking about is based on a, let's see, I think it's a 1969 book, 1967. 1969 will say somewhere in there. And it's called the Peter Principle, Why Things Always Go Wrong. And it definitely was based on an article written by a guy named Dr. Lawrence J. Peter, who was a an educator. Right. And apparently it was an Esquire magazine initially in January of 1967. Yes, there was a huge response to it. Right. And basically what it was, it was tongue-in-cheek. It's an unnatural law. Right. Like Parkinson's law, which we'll get to, right? Sure. Or Murphy's law, which we won't get to.

We've already done that one. Oh, was that pre-Chuck? I think it was pre-Chuck. Those days don't exist in my mind. Yeah, I know. So anyway, Chuck, it's a kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it actually does reveal kind of this, this rye observation that, you know, all of us have seen at one time or another that eventually, if you promote somebody based on good work, you're going to promote them to a point where they're so far out of their field, they've become incompetent in their current job. That's pretty funny. There's one sterling example that comes to mind. Oh, I don't know. Back in the heady days of 2005, maybe late August, early September 2005, a little thing called Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans with a vengeance. Yes. And there's this, I think it's

a federal agency, and it's charged with handling natural disasters or disasters of any kind that occur in the U.S. That would be the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. A FEMA, right. And it just so happened that in late August of 2005, FEMA was headed by a guy named Michael Brown, who you may know and love as Brownie. Right. So Brownie was running the show when Hurricane Katrina hit, and basically it took days for the feds to respond. I remember reading an article or several, maybe, where Bush was questioning whether it's even the federal government's role to help out in this kind of disaster. Right. Right. Well, sure enough, FEMA finally gets around to helping. I think they got a few bottles of water down there and

truck some people out, that kind of thing, and amid this complete cluster of a rescue humanitarian mission. Yeah. Mis-management. Totally. And every form of the word. Yeah. The good people of FEMA, we want to say, were probably working very hard, but it was a top-down type of thing. And just ease off. I'm going to bail Brownie out here in a second. Okay. But amid this this bungled crisis rescue mission, Bush goes down to New Orleans and says, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. Right. Which he wasn't. No. And he even knew he wasn't. No. Yeah. So this is not judgment on our part. Right. I think even while the rescue operation or the crisis alleviation operation was going on, Brownie famously said, can I quit now?

Yeah. Maybe feel bad for the guy. Yeah. No, I agree. He's in way over his head. I feel bad for him too. And he was in way over his head. Why? Because of the Peter principle, because he was promoted to a position that he was not qualified to manage. Correct. He was formally his job right before the head of FEMA. He was in charge of the commission on judges for the Arabian horse association. Right. He's good at it too. Yeah. He excelled in that position. Right. That was part of the reason why I think, you know, maybe a little bit of helping your buddy out. Sure. Had to do with it. So which, which everybody does. I mean, I got this job because of a friend. So that did you really? I got this job by my own blood, sweat and tears, pal. Blood,

sweat and tears, Josh. Great band. Agreed. So is earth, wind and fire. Right. But earth, wind and fire won't get you a job. Blood, sweat and tears will agree. So we'll cool in the gang. Okay. So Chuck, you're right. There, there is a certain level of nepotism or I'm not sure what it's called when you get friends jobs. Is it still nepotism? That was just relatively familial. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. We'll figure it out. So yeah. So, but brownie doesn't fit the classic definition of the Peter principle because he got his job in large part because he knew the president. Right. Is it usually someone who's promoted from within? Is that the distinction? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So what happens is you, I use the example in this article of a web designer.

Think of one of the guys in dev, right? Right. So you're just excelling at your work. You're, you're, you're working your tail off. Everything you do is just golden. You're a born developer. Right. Right. Well, if you do that long enough and you get to know the people around you long enough, you'll probably get promoted to a position of, of manager. Right. So where you're still over the dev department, but you're now telling the dev department what to do. Right. Conceivably, if you're of a certain ilk, you, you would be able to kind of carry that out. Well, yeah. If, if you're capable of doing that, but let's say that you are kind of good at that and you excel at that, but you're still really you're doing, you're walking behind other people and fixing

their mistakes, that kind of thing. Right. You're still doing developing. Let's say you excel in that managerial position and you get promoted eventually out of development. It may be your over development, like you're the CTO. Right. But you're no longer developing. Now you're managing, you're working with budgets, you're hiring people, you're firing people. Completely different skill set. You're likely going to be incompetent unless you're a born manager and you're good with budgets and, you know, dealing with COOs and CEOs and stuff like that. Right. That actually happened. Same exact scenario at my last job, a web developer, and he was great at that. They promoted him and he was not a good manager of people. No, I think, I think it takes

a certain kind of person. It's like sales. Sure. Right. I, I can't sell anything. Oh, come on. No, I'm telling you. Come on. You sold me, buddy. Thanks, dude. No, I can't. Like I'm no good at sales. Yeah. I also suck at serving. I was a terrible waiter. Yeah, I was a decent waiter. I sucked at it. That's good. Thanks. So thanks, Chuck. Why is that good? Well, because that means you don't have to be a waiter. That's true. Well, you were good at it and you're not a waiter. Well, true. I'm a writer. It's only one letter different. Agreed. So let's say you, you, you do get promoted to CTO and you're doing hiring and firing now. Here's where the Peter Principal, which has just occurred because you've been promoted to your level of incompetence.

Here's where it becomes a vicious cycle. Right? Right. Do you want to take where? No, go ahead. Okay. The, the, since you're hiring and firing people, you're probably also likely promoting people. Right. So if you're an incompetent manager, then you are probably going to make terrible decisions on who to promote. So the problem with it is that eventually in a hierarchy, which all businesses are based on, it's a top down, top down process where most of the work is being done by the lower levels, the base of the pyramid, and then you go further and further up. And the least amount of work is being done by the people at the top. Supposedly I hear. Right. So eventually the top of the hierarchy becomes populated exclusively by incompetent people.

Right. In a worst case, Peter Principal scenario. Right. But if this is what I found most interesting is that unless you're what he called a super incompetent quote unquote, then you won't get fired. No, you'll just continue along. And basically what happens is, is mediocrity takes hold. Doesn't mean you're awful and that you're going to make decisions that will destroy the company, but you're mediocre. And since there isn't a process of the demotion in this country, or maybe there isn't in any country, in the corporate structure at least, you can't be demoted without it looking like. You failed. You failed, exactly. Yeah. Like they can't just say, you know what, this isn't quite right. You're better at your other job. So why don't we just put you

back there and you'll even make more money doing so. Well, that's a real solution to the Peter Principal is number one, installing a mechanism where you, if you're not working out, you get to go back to what you're doing, but without the stigma of failure. The other, this is the one I subscribe to is offering increased compensation without promotion. I subscribed to that as well. Well, think about it. I mean, like most people accept promotions and be based on the increase in salary, right? Right. So sometimes there's really want to manage somebody. Well, I really want to go make more money. Yes. But those are probably people who are born managers. Yeah. But I would say the prestige and the title and the money is even above that. Yeah. The money's at the top.

Yeah. Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. So if you could, if you could set up your business in such a way that you are paying people, you're giving them increased pay, vastly increased pay, like the kind that you would get if you got a promotion without promoting them, then you're going to avoid the Peter Principal altogether. The problem is that you basically create a class structure where there are just people out there who are executives. Right. And that's what they do. And then you have people out there who are just developers. Right. It's actually very socialistic in nature. It is. Parkinson. Yeah. So there's another dude, an English historian. His name was C. Northcote. C. Northcote Parkinson. Nice. Great name. Nice touch. Thank you. And he wrote

in the Economist magazine in 1955, his first law, which was work expands so as to fill time available for its completion. I think most people have heard this. Yeah. And I think I might agree with the guy. Oh, yeah. If you give somebody a week to do a project, they'll take a week. If you give them two days, they'll get it done in two days. Sure. Same project here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's kind of like Murphy's law. Yeah. It's a natural law. Exactly. So yeah. Why Chuck just mentioned that is because one of the, there's actually a contrary theory to the Peter principle. Oh, is this Lazare? Yeah. Okay. That's the, he wrote, I'm sorry, an article, not a book called the Peter principle, a theory of decline. And he put the oneness for responsibility onto the

employee rather than an incompetent manager who incompetently promote somebody who shouldn't be, right? Right. He said that what happens is you have your average employee who's looking for that promotion probably because they want more money, right? Probably. So they're working, working, working, working, like, you know, 80 hour weeks and just putting in all this time, neglecting family, all that. And once that, once that's noticed after a certain amount of time, usually you, they will get a promotion. Right. Thing is, it's not a, that's not sustainable behavior, right? Well, that's when the trouble hits. You rest on your laurels once you finally hit that promotion. Yeah. And once you've gotten the salary, because again, businesses don't have any

kind of failsafe put in to knock you back down when you do do that. Right. You either get fired or you just keep doing the same job. And most likely you're not going to get fired. You're just going to do a mediocre job. Right. But Lazare or Lazare said that it was the employees basically creating a deception that made people who shouldn't be promoted, promoted because they're being promoted based on their work ethic that was actually an artificial work ethic. Right. That's kind of cool too. I like all this stuff. I thought you hated this article. Oh, I was just pulling your leg. Oh, you shouldn't toy with me. It's much, it's much more interesting when we talk about it than when I read it, to be honest. I agree. I agree, Chuck. We've taken some kind of fluffy

articles and done some cool things. We should, you know, we should do, we should start a podcast. What a good idea. I like talking about stuff. I don't even know what a podcast is, dude. A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in Mississippi with family friendly places like the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississippi.org slash family fun. Mississippi Wanderers welcome. I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild present Bridgewater season two. A lot of people now actually believe that there is some kind of mystical force in this region that attracts monsters and paranormal activity. The Bridgewater Triangle. Now that sounds about right. You're still denying that there's something beyond our understanding going

on here. Starring Supernatural's Misha Collins, The Walking Dead's Melissa Ponzio and Rogue One's Alan Tudyk, written by Lauren Shippen and created by me, Erin Mankey. Something about all of this doesn't feel right. Hello? Is someone there? Something went wrong here. Olivia, we should hurry. We have a much bigger problem. What is that? Olivia, run! Listen to Bridgewater now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and learn more over at grimandmild.com slash Bridgewater. You know, the Peter principle also doesn't just apply to employees. Right. It applies to innovation as well. Is that right, buddy? Yeah, it's the same exact principle and this was an essay called The Peter Principle of Innovation

by Nitin. I remember that word. Nitin Borwonkar. What a great name. He basically said the same thing applies to innovation. He or she. He or she proposed that a young company has room to innovate, producing new ideas, advancing old ideas and the same thing happens. At some point, the innovation turns stagnant. Yeah, the reason why it turns stagnant is because eventually you hit a home run and you say, okay, well, this one thing we just did just made us a billion dollars. Let's keep doing it over and over again and everything else kind of falls to the wayside. So yeah, innovation becomes stagnant. What happens is the people who are still innovators go off, found their own company and do the same thing and it just keeps happening exponentially.

This cycle of innovation and stagnation. I think Google would probably be a good example. It's like they've completely mastered search on the internet at this point, seemingly. They've innovated their company structure and their company model to a point where people have left Google and started their own companies. Sure. I don't know that it's a lack of innovation, though. They do a lot. I don't think they've hit stagnation yet. You don't think so? No. Man, they're throwing so much money at new ideas all the time and they've got the Google reader where they're trying to scan every book in existence and put it on the web for free. That's true. There's the Google takeover the planet project. Right.

We're in there all going to put microchips in our brain while we're sleeping so I can control us. They're building a Death Star. They're building a Death Star. Yeah, the Death Star. Yeah. So yeah, I think they're still innovating. No, they are in different directions. I think I was probably just thinking of the Google base model. Yeah, I understand. But yeah, you're totally right on the mind of Josh. So, Chuck, we were talking about ways to fight the peer principle and there's actually one more way and that's actually up to the employee. What, to just have to go get them to do good work? No. No, it's to have the smarts and wherewithal to actually say, you know what, this guy's about to promote me into my level of

incompetence and I'm not going to do it. Think again, buddy. So, you can just turn down a promotion. Yeah, but it's so unheard of in the States. It goes back to the money thing now. If it was the kind of thing where they would give someone raises without the promotion, I think people might be more inclined to do that. Well, yeah, it has to go hand in hand with the companion piece, which is living without as much money as you could have. Dude, I'd be all over that. More money, less responsibility? I think that the peer principle actually did speak to my debt because he loved drafting. He loved drawing HVAC. Right, aspect, right? Really? That was his thing. And actually, toward the end of his career, he got tired of HVAC so he went over and learned

refrigeration, which is apparently totally different. I would have thought that it had fallen into the same category, but I guess not. But after like 30, 40 years, he got bored with HVAC, but he didn't try to move up. He just went to refrigeration. And he actually, I don't know if he ever turned down a promotion or not, but he made it very well known that he was quite happy doing what he was doing. He did well for himself and he never became an executive. He just didn't want to. So I mean, it can be done. And I'm wondering just how much of an effect or impact the peer principle reading the book had on it. But yeah, this is called Peter's Perry, which is basically turning down a promotion. If you don't have the guts to turn

down a promotion, or if your spouse would murder you if he or she found out that you turned down a promotion, you can actually self-sabotage. Yeah, sure. Do you want to hear a couple examples that Peter gives? Yeah, I'd love to. One is basically wearing too much perfume or cologne. Really? Nobody wants to be around you like that, you know, but it's not so, it's not such an obvious social disgrace. Yeah, I got another one. They're going to say anything. I love, yeah, I know what you're going to say. Go ahead, Chuck. Parking in the company president's reserve parking space. Yeah, again, you're just showing like, I don't really care. I'm not going to look out for you unnecessarily. My favorite one is to kind of subtly give the impression

that you lead a morally questionable personal life. Kind of like we do? Yeah, which we do every week, twice a week, actually. I might have a bit of self-sabotage in me. Do you think? Me too. So, Chuck, neither one of us want to manage anyone. You know, I was avoiding that because, you know, the parry, I fell on one side. I go to the self-sabotage side. I don't want to manage anybody, either, Chuck. No, I have a hard time managing myself and you. Yeah, so there you go. Peter Principle. Peter Principle, it's done. If you want to learn more about it, or if you basically want to read the article, Chuck, and I just covered 110%, you can go to howstuffworks.com, our beloved website, and type Peter Principle into the handy search bar, which means, since I just

said handy search bar, that it's time for Listener Mail. Listener Mail, Josh. I'm going to call this one Frightening Listener Mail. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you read this one because you usually email me and say, did you read this one? And I didn't get that on this one. Okay. I'm writing to share an experience I've had, and this is related to the Deja Vu episode. And this is from Drowsy Doug and his dreadful dreams in Portland, Oregon for Doug. So Doug says, at times when I'm sleeping, my mind wakes in the middle of the night, but my body does not. My eyes open, and I can see the bedroom from a sideways angle. The dark shadows of the dresser, the tree outside the window, my arms and legs curled up below me, yet I cannot move. The frightening thing,

it's already frightening if you ask me, the frightening thing about this is that though my mind is aware of the reality of my situation, it vacillates in and out of the subconscious, creating visions that seem all too real. So he goes on for a minute here, but I'm gonna skip down. One particular moment which stands up my mind is this. I opened my eyes in the middle of the night. I was lying in my bed on my back paralyzed, watching the image of someone standing at the foot of my bed in a pig suit. What? Yes, in a costume animal. I was waiting for that because he actually put that in parentheticals. I know that I had my eyes open because I slowly came to consciousness. The pig man fading into the darkness like a blurry image, and I hadn't closed

my eyes the whole time. It was as if my mind just projected an imagined image onto what I was actually seeing. Once I even got up from my own bed, walked into the bathroom, and in the darkness, the reflection of my own face was stretched and contorted, and I was bleeding black liquid out of my mouth. But then I woke up and I was fine. So Drowsy Doug says, now I'm sure you get lots of weirdos writing you, but I assure you I'm a pretty normal guy, all except for this terrifying waking nightmare syndrome. I don't believe in possession or ghost or anything like that, so I'm not supposing the supernatural. Yet the occurrence of these dreams both fascinates and terrifies me. I've come to recognize the exact creeping feeling of it coming on, yet by that

point there's nothing I can do, but try to talk myself into waking. Is this common? Have you ever heard of this? And why can't they be about Hollywood hotties and not strangers in pig suits? So like, why can't I see Giselle at the foot of my veil and not some guy in a pig suit? He actually does suffer from a recognized condition, and sadly I don't know what it is. Yeah, it sounds like- What it's called, but when your mind wakes before your body does- This is pretty bad. Conscious of your surroundings. It is a recognized condition. Seeing first suiters is, I don't know what that is, and seeing yourself bleed like black ooze,

sounds like there's a lot of self-loathing there. It's frightening. Is that your armchair, uh, Psychiatry? Yeah, I literally have my arm on a chair right now. You do. And then I asked him if he'd seen the movie Donnie Darko, because I don't know if he saw that, but- It was very reminiscent of that. So a guy in a rabbit suit in Frank the Rabbit, which is one of my favorite movies.

That's a great movie. It is. It's so well done. And so, Drowsy Doug, dude, good luck. Wish we could help you. I wish we could help Doug, too. If anybody out there has any clues to Doug's mystery, any suggestions on maybe what Doug could do, E.G. Drink Valyrian root tea and hope for the best, that kind of thing. Right. Um, just email us at StuffPodcast at howstuffworks.com. For people who love food, there's no place on earth quite like Mississippi, where a melting pot of culinary talent blends the flavors of yesterday and today.

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